The Ottomans had a variety of ways of dealing with non-Muslim foreigners. In theory, Islamic law assumed a constant state of war between Muslim and non-Muslim rulers, but in practice, long-term peace arrangements were possible and even common. In terms of diplomacy, the Ottomans’ instruments and peacemaking procedures were similar to those of the West, the Turks likewise building on established customs and practices from the Byzantine period and beyond. The ahdnames were particularly important for international relations; originally unilateral documents, they evolved into more reciprocal instruments, only to become more unilateral again in the second half of the seventeenth century. In theory, peace with unbelievers should be temporary, but in practice, the duration of treaties concluded by the Ottomans reflected their assessment of the likelihood of hostilities resuming; in the case of countries that did not pose any military threat to the sultan’s domains, peace could even be concluded indefinitely. As long as both sides maintained the friendship between the two parties, there was no need to fear the Turks. The interconnected phenomena of slavery and privateering regularly put a strain on this friendship, as men, women and children on both sides were dragged off and sold as chattel. This loss of life and property sometimes led to international incidents, in which the Ottoman authorities made it clear that the basic Islamic parameters of peace could not be ignored with impunity.

Between 1660 and 1775 the number of European countries with diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire that obtained ahdames of their own grew rapidly, but many of these newcomers did not establish networks of consulates and vice-consulates in the eastern Mediterranean. Instead, they appointed the consuls of other European nations as their vice-consuls. This did not hurt the legal privileges of the merchants from these countries. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some nations asked the Ottoman government to renew their capitulations several times with the single aim of obtaining more privileges. This development culminated in the French capitulations of 1740, which incorporated the clauses of virtually all earlier ahdnames. In the eyes of many Ottomans, the capitulations of 1740 came to symbolise the Europeans’ ceaseless attempts to obtain more and more privileges from the Turks. But the French renewal of their capitulations in 1673 already laid the foundations for the rise of imperialism. It was then that the Ottoman authorities granted Ottoman subjects working for foreigners as interpreters or as warehousemen the same fiscal and legal status as the Westerners. It was also in 1673 that the French had their role as protectors of the Christian Holy Places in Jerusalem, as well as of all Catholic clergymen – not just Western missionaries, but all Catholic clerics – in the Levant codified in their capitulations. It was this French model that the Russians used in 1774 to claim their own protectorate over all Greek Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman realm.